Is Paintball an Olympic Sport
Question: Is Paintball an Olympic Sport
Answer:
Paintball is not currently an Olympic sport nor are there immediate plans to make it such.
According to the Olympics, "To make it onto the Olympic programme, a sport first has to be recognised: it must be administered by an International Federation which ensures that the sport's activities follow the Olympic Charter. If it is widely practised around the world and meets a number of criteria established by the IOC session, a recognised sport may be added to the Olympic programme on the recommendation of the IOC's Olympic Programme Commission."
The biggest problem paintball faces is that it is not administered by any truly international federation but instead there are dozens of smaller national and local organizations and a few international organizations that all have their own rules and regulations. While the general idea of paintball is the same (shooting paintballs with compressed gas from a gun) wherever you go, there are large variations of the sport between sanctioned events - compare, for example, the PSP to the UWL. Until one form of paintball truly globalizes itself and is embraced, there is no chance of the sport becoming an Olympic sport.
Additionally, paintball still needs to become adopted in a larger area of the world. While North America and Europe play paintball, Asia, India, Africa and South America all need to develop an organized, mainstream following before the sport will truly be considered international. Until that happens, paintball will just have to be content to be a non-Olympic sport.
Answer:
Paintball is not currently an Olympic sport nor are there immediate plans to make it such.
According to the Olympics, "To make it onto the Olympic programme, a sport first has to be recognised: it must be administered by an International Federation which ensures that the sport's activities follow the Olympic Charter. If it is widely practised around the world and meets a number of criteria established by the IOC session, a recognised sport may be added to the Olympic programme on the recommendation of the IOC's Olympic Programme Commission."
The biggest problem paintball faces is that it is not administered by any truly international federation but instead there are dozens of smaller national and local organizations and a few international organizations that all have their own rules and regulations. While the general idea of paintball is the same (shooting paintballs with compressed gas from a gun) wherever you go, there are large variations of the sport between sanctioned events - compare, for example, the PSP to the UWL. Until one form of paintball truly globalizes itself and is embraced, there is no chance of the sport becoming an Olympic sport.
Additionally, paintball still needs to become adopted in a larger area of the world. While North America and Europe play paintball, Asia, India, Africa and South America all need to develop an organized, mainstream following before the sport will truly be considered international. Until that happens, paintball will just have to be content to be a non-Olympic sport.
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